Graduate Student Profiles

Ken Pelman

Ken
Pelman graduated in May 2011 with his Master of GIS degree, the first
GeoVISTA MGIS affiliate. Kens advisor was GeoVISTA Assistant
Director Dr. Anthony Robinson. Ken came to the Penn State MGIS program
(www.pennstategis.com)
after completing his M.S. degree at University Park in the Department
of Meteorology and taking a job in Washington, DC at NOAA. While working
at NOAAs Climate Prediction Center hes been working on
his MGIS degree, in addition to raising two sons with his wife.

About Ken's Research

On May 10, 2011, Ken presented his capstone research project at the
2011 Information
Systems for Crisis Response and Management conference held in
Lisbon, Portugal. Ken completed a software tool called EvacSpace (www.evacspace.com)
that is designed to support rapid evacuation planning through an interactive,
visually-enabled interface. Most current evacuation planning tools
are complex, expensive, and require specialized underlying spatial
data. Kens approach focuses on getting immediate results with
little or no training through a clever use of Google Maps, Directions,
Fusion Tables, and Charts. Ken received a travel stipend to support
his trip to Portugal to present on behalf of the GeoVISTA Center and
MGIS program.